Unified communications represents an important aspect of productivity in contemporary business culture, and its success from company to company can serve as a bellwether indication of the company's overall management success. An essential feature behind unified communications is the ability to have a single way for reaching an employee. Thus, in a fully configured unified communications environment, all messages to an employee, regardless of the format of their origin (e.g., e-mail) will reach the employee at the earliest possible moment via another format (e.g., SMS) if necessary.
Unified communications may include the integration of real-time communication services (e.g., instant messaging) with non-real time communication services (e.g., SMS). Unified communications systems typically comprise not a single system but the integration of data from a potentially unlimited set of separate communications devices and systems.
As a further representative example, unified communications permit one party (e.g., a co-worker) to send a message on one medium and have it received by another party on another medium. This process effectively transfers an activity from one communications medium to another. For example, a message recipient could receive an e-mail message from a co-worker and access it through a mobile phone.
Presence information refers to the combination of the availability of a communication recipient to receive a message and that person's willingness to speak. For example, if the message sender is online according to the presence information and currently accepts calls, the response can be sent immediately through text chat or video call. Otherwise, the communication may be sent as a non real-time message that can be accessed through a variety of media. Thus, presence information typically represents a status indicator that conveys the availability and willingness of a potential communication partner.
Difficulties arise in producing a unified view of data, such as presence information, when a party's communication media are spread across multiple and/or overlapping systems. When a user's communications environment comprises multiple devices, not all of which are aware of the others, then the unity among the devices of the user's communications network is incomplete. So, for example, a party's laptop computer might not know about the same user's mobile telephone. Consequently, the mobile telephone is not joined into the same effective communications network as the other devices associated with the laptop computer, and a presence system cannot integrate the mobile phone into the unified communications environment.
Signaling a user's availability status to the coworkers in his immediate vicinity is also an important element in modern communications. It may matter little how sophisticated a presence system operates if the user's co-workers do not know that he is engaged in a conversation and interrupt him. For this reason, online indicators (“OLIs”) have become popular. OLIs can take many forms, but the most common form is a lighted device that stands somewhere near the user's desk. When illuminated, the light signals that the user is engaged in a conversation, and when out, the light indicates the user's presence and potential availability for interruption.
Automatic phone lifters also provide critical support for modern communications. A phone lifter is a device configured to lift the physical handset on a conventional hard phone to engage a call. Lifters may provide their greatest benefits when operating in conjunction with headsets. This combination allows a user to answer or place a call using buttons associated with his headset (or computer) with corresponding actions mimicked by the manual lifter on the physical telephone.
Unified communications has analogs in the home consumer market. A home user may want to watch a television program, surf the Internet, or play a game uninterrupted. The home user may be able control devices (e.g., a wired telephone) associated with the home cable network to implement the desired message routing, but this home cable network has little control over interruptions coming from outside this equipment configuration.
Attempts to solve these problems in the prior art have tended to be either overly complicated, overly expensive, or both. To further complicate matters, many corporations now employ softphones in their corporate networks. Softphones are typically computer programs that facilitate audio and/or audiovisual conversations. For internal calls, softphones may operate over some form of local area network, such as an Ethernet. Softphones may even be configured to provide telephone communications outside the company such as via the Internet. Calls that arise outside the conventional hard phone installation on the user's workstation may not necessarily communicate with equipment associated only, or primarily, with the hard phone. Equipment falling into this category includes many conventional OLIs. A simple and robust solution is called for that makes unified communications more robust and ubiquitous and unites the elements of the user's communication system and its related equipment.